Three lectures on the origin and properties of malaria or marsh miasma : with the best means of preventing its formation and of obviating its effects on the human constitution, when this cannot be done : delivered to the medical class of the University of Virginia / by Alfred T. Magill.

  • Magill, Alfred T. (Alfred Thruston), 1804-1837.
Date:
1834
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three lectures on the origin and properties of malaria or marsh miasma : with the best means of preventing its formation and of obviating its effects on the human constitution, when this cannot be done : delivered to the medical class of the University of Virginia / by Alfred T. Magill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    diterranean it has pourd with a liberal hand the vials of its wrath.* The shores of Africa, that region of mental darkness, though harm- less to the natives, are fraught with the seeds of disease to the Eu- ropean and American constitution : Witness the lives that have been and still are annually sacrificed upon the altar of Colonization. The extensive marshes of the Netherlands have often proved the sources of severe and wide-spread disease.f Our own highly favored land almost throughout its entire extent, has frequently been visited by extensive aud malignant epidemics, increasing in frequency and seve- rity as we proceed southward. The bold and majestic rivers which flow through our country, and beautify its scenery, often prove the source of destructive epidemics. The king of rivers, the grand and magnificent Mississippi, like the Nile of Egypt, and the Ganges of the East, while it fertilizes the soil by its extensive annual inundations, spreads at the same time far and wide the seeds of disease. Miasmatic exhalation as a cause of disease seems to have entirely escaped the notice of the Ancient Physicians. The keen and scru- tinizing mind of Hippocrates, confessedly the first among the ancients for talent and observation ; and in more modern times, the sagacious intellect and unequalled observation of Sydenham, (both of whom paid especial attention to the causation of fever) failed to detect this prolific agent of disease. The merit of its discovery was reserved for Lancisi, and Italian physician, who, about the beginning of the last *Of all the countries lying along the Mediterranean, Italy has probably suffered most from Malaria. Rome once the proud mistress of the world, in her career to greatness and splendour, had often well nigh been annihilated by the blight- ing hand of pestilence. Livy mentions the occurrence of fifteen plagues before the year Ab. Urbe Condita 5'J, and no one now doubts that they were produced by the pestiferous exhalations from the neighbouring marshes. One would have supposed that these severe visitations, before she had acquired the bone and musele of matu- rity would have given a permanent check to her growth, but the cupidity and en- terprise of man can triumph over apparently insuperable difficulties. All that portion of Italy too, which is bounded on the one side by the Mediterranean, and by the Appennines on the other, and extending from Pisa on the north to Terracina on the south, has been rendered a complete desert by the Malaria in which it abounds- This portion of the country (says Griffith,) is almost uninhabited, and the appearance of the few wretched beings whom necessity detains there is fright- ful in the extreme, exhibiting the effects of the noxious exhalations in every form of bilious disorder. Other countries along the sea coast, have also occasionally suffered from this scourge most severely. In Gibralter, in 1804, out of a popula- tion of about 10,000, there perished from the 1st of September to the 31st of De- cember inclusive, 5946 individuals, being more than one half of the inhabitants. In 1810 another destructive pestilence ravaged the same place which is clearly proved by Dr. Burnett to have arisen from marsh exhalation. In Cadiz in 1800, out of a population of about 00,000, the number of the affected from the beginning of August to the first week in November, amounted to 48,520. tThe famous Walcheren expedition of the British in the year 1809 is still fresh in the recollection of many. Out of sixteen thousand troops, constituting tho whole British force, there was on tho 23rd of September 9,ti00 prostrate with tho fever.